Year: 2005

Categories
Cooking With Code

Vid-e-o, ooh, play it one more time on…*

Ah, fun. I’ve discovered yet another new capability in WordPress: video! As anyone who’s been watching the eyeballs pop up in Phosphor Dot Fossils lately has no doubt noticed, I’ve become very fond of Flash video. I work in an audiovisual medium, you see, so while I enjoy writing – I love it, really – I also have one foot in these other media. Now, thanks to an insanely handy WordPress plug-in called Kimili Flash Embed, I can even throw video at you in my blawg.
Now, I’m still a believer in being bandwidth-friendly, so any video I chuck at you in Scribblings will be on a “static page.” That’s something which is kept separate from actual blog postings and comments in the database, and I’ve already added three gems from my archive for you to look at. I may do some actual video blogging in the future – but if I do, it will always be an option, not something that’s stuffed into a blog entry (even though that capability exists) where anyone who comes here has to see it.
* with apologies to Jeff Lynne.… Read more

Categories
Music Television & Movies

Hi-fi sci-fi

I’ve been gobbling up soundtrack CDs lately. The new Chronicles Of Narnia soundtrack is good stuff, and I had forgotten how good the orchestral score (i.e. “the stuff Queen didn’t do”) to Flash Gordon was in places. Yes, that Flash Gordon. That CD has become very very hard to find – it was a composer promo pressed for Howard Blake by the now-defunct SuperTracks, and also includes Blake’s music for Amityville 3-D (while I’ll admit I have yet to listen to, and have never seen). I snatched up a copy for a reasonable price this month (merry Christmas to me!), and I’m very pleased. Other recent acquisitions: Firefly, Stargate Atlantis, Planet Of The Apes (TV series), Stargate SG-1 Season 1…
Picking up on a trend?
I’ve asked this question many a time before, and I still haven’t found an answer. And I really want to know, psychologically, aesthetically, what it is that connects science fiction fans to soundtrack music so much. Is it an appreciation for the orchestra? When a couple of my favorites of the past 6-7 years have included the new Battlestar Galactica and the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade, both of them very unconventional musically, I don’t think that’s necessarily it. So what is it? Are the composers’ imaginations unleashed by the subject matter to create more thrilling soundscapes than usual?
I don’t just own science fiction movie and TV and game soundtracks exclusively, but let’s tune in to reality FM: science fiction scores probably comprise at least 90% of my extensive soundtrack collection. And the scary thing is, I can’t even tell you why that is.
Talk to me, people. There’s a graduate paper in musicology just waiting to happen here.… Read more

Categories
Serious Stuff

The most disturbing dream I’ve ever had.

I was recently trying to convey this to a friend of mine and though I’d post it here, just in case anyone wants to have a go at interpreting it, or perhaps just wants to wallow in how staggeringly morbid it is.
I recently had a dream/nightmare, actually several if you want to be technical about it, as it was a “continuing storyline” that spread out over 2 or 3 nights. It wasn’t the same dream or variation on a theme over and over, it was an ongoing thing, as if I had this other life that was going on while I sleep. I don’t remember seeing anything in the paper, on TV or in any other medium with anything even remotely approximating this story, nothing that I can think of that would influence this train of throught into running a nightly timetable through my head.
Basically, in this dream, I’m living in the house where I grew up, as an adult. My wife doesn’t feature anywhere in the dream at all – it’s like she’s just not even there in that world. And I have a baby daughter. (Where this baby came from, I have no idea, because there’s no wife or girlfriend at all in the entire story.) Put simply, I turn my back for ten seconds to climb up on a ladder and change the light bulb in my basement (something I never actually did while I was living there). And I come back down, and she’s gone. Frantic searching ensues. I can’t find a trace of her. I call, shout, scream, because at this point, even upsetting the kid enough to get her to cry will lead me to her. There’s not an open door, there’s no one else in the house, and I can’t figure out where she’s gone.
That’s pretty much night one. The second night basically involves friends (but no one I recognize as family, or who is playing any kind of familial role) coming over to commisserate, the police searching everywhere in and around the house, asking me questions, and a few people questioning my fitness to be raising this kid on my own. (On that score, I don’t disagree – I know zip about taking care of an infant.)
On the third night’s dream, she turns up dead. Behind an appliance somewhere – somewhere where I’ve already looked, again and again and again, trying to find her, and somewhere where I can’t even picture how she got back there. She got stuck, couldn’t move and apparently couldn’t make a sound. She was in the basement the whole time, and I was right there looking for her, and I couldn’t help her in time.
I woke up from that, I almost think my subconscious forced me to wake up at that point, and I felt like I had been gut-punched until my insides were hollowed out. I felt like I really had lost that child. The rest of that waking day was completely lost to me, because I was feeling this devastating emotional fallout from something that didn’t even really happen. I got upset about it again later, a whole different flavor of upset, because I really found myself wondering what the hell any of that meant, and why it was hitting me so hard when my eyelids were open.
For the record, I’ve never had a younger sibling, much less had one die; I’ve never had a nephew, niece, cousin or any other relative die at that age, nothing that would bring that kind of a thought to the surface, let alone in that much detail. I’ve never had any children of my own, and I’ve never even succeeded in conceiving one. I’ve never had a child to lose, or known anyone who had anything like this happen.
So why any of this would occur to my subconscious, much less in a way that I almost can’t get away from it, I have no idea. But it was really disturbing.… Read more

Categories
Music

They call me the ripper

The music shelf in my closet - this is where the CD changer magazines live. And where the fish lives.My mission, which I spoke of in an earlier blog entry under the music heading, is within 30 discs of being complete – my entire music CD collection is now on my hard drive, with the exception of my Beatles CDs. (I’ve been doing this by pulling a handful of 6-CD changer magazines off the shelf at a time, and I’ve closed in on the Fab Four from both sides of the alphabet.) To say that this has proven to be not just labor-intensive (and CPU-time intensive) but an organizational challenge as well would pretty much sum it up. I’ve got 80 gigabytes of music ripped at 160Kbps…how does one organize that much stuff when it’s all discrete tracks?
The structure I’ve settled on pretty much drops the music into one of these directories: 50s and before, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, Soundtracks, Comedy, Game Music; each of those is then divided up alphabetically. There are also individual directories for several “go-to” favorites which are my musical comfort food – ELO, Alan Parsons, the Finn family tree (Split Enz, Crowded House, and the various solo and side projects emerging from those groups’ history), Star Wars music, Star Trek music, Doctor Who music, Peter Gabriel…there are probably about 20 of these “specialized” directories that fall outside the decade/category structure.
I tried to build a Winamp playlist of everything on the drive, just to see how long it would take for me to listen to my entire collection, from start to finish. Winamp froze up while trying to add up the length of the list.
But I thought it’d be fun just to total up some of those specialized directories. Let’s see what I have the most of to listen to. (This doesn’t really reflect how much of it I actually listen to on a frequent basis, just how much of it I’ve got on CD somewhere.) It’s not fair to compare the volume of music from a TV series (which may have tons of releases reflecting year after year of new music) to more mainstream stuff where someone’s touring, so I’ve divided things up that way. Here’s the countdown:
Afro Celt Sound System – 5 hours, 29 minutes
Jason Falkner (no Jellyfish) – 5 hours, 41 minutes
Art Of Noise – 6 hours, 29 minutes
Ben Folds / Ben Folds Five – 7 hours, 52 minutes
Depeche Mode – 9 hours, 11 minutes
Peter Gabriel (no Genesis) – 10 hours, 8 minutes
ELO, related artists & tributes – 11 hours even
Tori Amos – 13 hours, 14 minutes
Alan Parsons & related projects – 15 hours, 27 minutes
Finn family tree, related artists & tributes – 32 hours, 23 minutes
Star Wars soundtracks – 14 hours even
Babylon 5 soundtracks – 18 hours, 42 minutes
Star Trek soundtracks – 19 hours, 32 minutes
Doctor Who – 33 hours, 42 minutes
If some of these totals seem impossibly huge, I also tend to throw spinoff and remix stuff into the same directory as the artist or the property being remixed. (The Star Wars directory includes Meco, Shadows Of The Empire, and Christmas In The Stars, for example, and most of the soundtrack directories also include any original music for games based on that series. Frighteningly enough, the B5, Trek and Who directories include subdirectories for music by cast members, such as the solo musical escapades of Mssrs. Shatner, Mumy & Pertwee, which I did not count in these totals.)
All four of those major soundtrack directories crammed into the same playlist totalled 86 hours and 23 minutes. As a side note, there’s plenty of Star Trek music – and good Star Trek music, at that – waiting to see the official light of day. But the simple fact is that more Doctor Who music has been released. What’s even scarier than that is that, after about half an hour of crunching to come up with the number, Winamp says that the total running time of every soundtrack – movie, TV or game – is over 230 hours (5,671 tracks).
If the formula for royalties, performance rights fees, internet radio and podcasting ever gets simplified into a workable form that doesn’t look like the combination of a quadratic equation and a potato that’s exploded in the microwave, then somewhere in here lies the ingredients for one really freakin’ weird internet radio station. If not several.
In the meantime, I’m apparently going to need a iPod approximately the size of a box of printer paper. Hey, while we’re at it, they have these new video iPods. I’ve been thinking…if that thing people listen to has been called an iPod for years, wouldn’t it have made as much sense to call the thing that people will be watching an earPod?… Read more

Categories
Critters Home Base

SQUEAK.

Woof. Brrrrrr.This picture really says it all, doesn’t it? After being inside for most of the past few days, Xena was happy to see the snow melting off of the deck (and her doghouse) and spent some quality time outside today. I can see where it’d be easy for an 80 pound dog to come down with a bad case of cabin fever, even though she loves her people and her kitty friends.
However, she doesn’t like the other four-legged denizens of our home. Neither do her kitty friends. We’re talking about a sudden convergence of mice on our home. I think someone booked a convention and didn’t tell me. I’ve only seen one, but we’ve been hearing them up in the attic for a couple of weeks now. The one I’ve actually seen in the house has been pretty bold – he got as far as the game room last night before Othello decided to address the traditional role of cats with relation to mice and chased the little bugger right back into his hole behind the washing machine. We’ve left some D-Con treats for our new guests to feast on, so hopefully Othello can rest easy again here in a few days.
The Gabby Cat.Sadly, I can only assume this means that we have a Barn Kitty vacancy. I haven’t seen Gabby Cat in about 9 months, so I assume she moved on or decided to stick closer to home (and come on, as nice as that cat was, she had to have a home of her own – that was somebody’s baby). With this weather, and some of the stormy weather we had when it was warmer this year, I don’t blame her. There was also a mountain lion screech about three weeks ago, which seemed a bit early in the year, but I can see where a small cat, even a feral one, would say “Okay, I can see you’ve got this under control, big guy” and cede the territory.
Apparently that kind of psychology doesn’t do it for mice though. A Barn Kitty could be intercepting mice between our overgrown field and the house, and could probably feed herself and a bunch of Barn Kittens quite handsomely that way. So, if you’re reading this and you’re a Barn Kitty, please, consider me open for applicants.… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff

No rest for Orac

Poor old Orac. No, not the cranky computer from Blake’s 7, but the cranky computer on which I used to build this site. Orac was a homemade Frankenstein monster with some issues. He’d freeze up inexplicably in the midst of routine operations that were anything but taxing to his processor. Sometimes the freeze would end in a matter of seconds, and sometimes it would end in a three-fingered salute. I depended on it both at home and to do stuff for work, and it was a singularly frustrating experience having so much of my life in the virtual hands of such a persnickety computer. When I got the new Dell machine this summer, I gratefully retired Orac. As cranky as he was, he served me well.
About a week later, Orac was back in service.
Not frequently, mind you, and it’s not as if I drop-kicked the new machine out the window, but I found that there were some things it simply wouldn’t do. For one thing, my scanner – still perfectly serviceable, and still a relic of the pre-USB era with its parallel-port interface – had a driver disk that the new PC just wouldn’t let me load. “Blech!” it would say. “I won’t load that driver! My operating system is too modern!”
So Orac was back on the air – with a scanner and nothing more attached to it.
Then a few weeks ago, I discovered that my new PC also wouldn’t properly run an emulator called Stella. Stella is a DOS-based Atari 2600 emulator which, short of the real hardware and a stack of real cartridges, remains my favorite way to play those games. So out of the storage box in my closet came my equally cranky old VGA-to-NTSC scan converter, which I promptly plugged into Orac. Now Orac can output video of any 2600 games I don’t actually own so I can create the flash movies that will eventually grace nearly every game review page on this site. It seems Orac’s work will never be done. In hindsight, perhaps I should’ve given that computer another name from Blake’s 7 lore – the much-put upon Slave from the fourth series.
For the second week running, my wife has – without even really trying – brought home morsels of Finn Brothers goodness that my ears have not heard. A week or so ago, she was perusing her favorite Christian book/music store and was trying to stuff one more CD into her shopping bag to meet the minimum for a “buy X, get 1 free” deal, and grabbed a Sixpence None The Richer CD for me, at a loss for what else to get. That’s okay – I like Sixpence. And little did she or I know, that CD had the group’s cover of Don’t Dream It’s Over on it, and a decent cover at that. Tonight she found the limited edition CD/DVD pack of Harry Gregson-Williams’ score from The Chronicles Of Narnia at a deep discount and picked that up, figuring that it could be review fodder. Lo and behold, in addition to the score there are a few songs from the movie on there, among them a brand new Tim Finn tune. I think I’m just going to send her off to search for rare Finn CD singles next, because she’s having better luck at adding to my Finn collection than I am.
ice scream
It’s funny – yesterday, despite being stuck at home and unable to get to work, I sent some of these photos of my iced-over street (in full-size form, though) to our chief meteorologist, along with a note that nothing had been done to even attempt to clear that street. He pretty much read the note word-for-word on the air while showing this picture. Amazingly, my street was gritted first thing this morning. Coincidence?
In Arkansas football news, Coach Gus Malzahn has been lured away from a stellar career as head coach at multiple-state-championship-winning Springdale High School, and is going to be the first offensive coach the Razorbacks have had since head coach Houston Nutt arrived. It doesn’t take a pro sports analyst to see how this will play out: within 5 years, I’ll bet that Frank Broyles will retire as the school’s athletic director, Houston Nutt will “retire” from coaching to take Broyles’ place, and then Malzahn will slide comfortably into the head coaching slot. One thing’s for sure, if Malzahn can get the Hogs fired up like he’s done with numerous teams at Springdale, Arkansas could be a force to be reckoned with again. Only time will tell. For now, I think this was a very good move.… Read more

Categories
Should We Talk About The Weather?

Never mind a snow day, I’m having a snow night!

Some pictures taken right after I got home, around 2:30am.
It's snowing!
The street just next to my driveway – not a thing’s been done to clear it! Fortunately it’s mostly snow, but I did hit quite a few icy patches too. Right after I snapped these photos, to my horror, I heard a vehicle coming around the corner – and everyone takes that corner too fast. And here I am, standing right next to the icy street, camcorder in hand. Turns out it was sheriff’s deputies on patrol. Whew.… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff

In search of…

I try to check my site stats a couple of times a month – to see who’s visiting what parts of my site, how often, and how they’re getting there. That sort of thing. One of the most interesting features I have at my command is a list of the search engine strings that have led people here. Sometimes I have to wonder how these search keywords could bring anyone to thelogbook.com. Sometimes I know, and I get a big laugh out of the deal. I’m not making fun of any of the site’s readers here, and I hope no one thinks that I am, but sometimes these search terms are a hoot.
“order bashful” …and get 33% off if you buy Dopey during the same visit.
“voyeurism” …what ever are you looking for on my site, sir?
“andromeda ascendant video music” …the good news is, Atari made that. The bad news is that it won’t put Lexa Doig on your screen.
“loading DVD movie” …good luck with that. I suggest watching DVD movie after it’s loaded.
“logbook ruler” …that would be me.
“spandex ass” …excuse me? I’ve been called many things, but this takes the cake! Prepare to die!
“othello pillow” …ha! Just try it! He still has his back claws, y’know.
“baby kitties” …awwwwwww!
“doctors adventures sex” …coming soon from the pen of Russell T. Davies?
“fascist robot” …coming soon from the makers of Robot Chicken?!?
“Twister scientific accuracy” …I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that movie and that term mentioned in one sentence…with a straight face. Unless you’re talking about the board game.
“star trek 11 the tardis” – so that’s what the next movie’s going to be!… Read more